Showing posts with label Path. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Path. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2009

1790's HOME & GARDEN: Albany, New York

Lecturing in Albany, New York last week I had the option of hotel or private home. Please. Observing how others live & garden inform my Muse (more about Muse in another post).
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All of a Tuesday NAUGHTY GIRL hosted me about Albany: Shaker gardens (more in another post), her friends homes & gardens, restaurants, Master Gardener public gardens, historical sites, and evading police twice on downtown bridges during the filming of Angelina Jolie's newest movie. NAUGHTY GIRL was good, indeed, for my Muse.
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APPLE SAUCE QUEEN, below, lives in this circa 1790 home. My 1st time inside a real 5-4&door.
APPLE SAUCE QUEEN had 4 minutes notice of our arrival. She & her husband were in the backyard gardening & caretaking a grandson. Spring, calm, beauty, love, laughter emanated from this trio as we pulled into their drive.
Have you designed shadows, above, into your landscape? Wish you could have walked upon this venerable stone path to APPLE SAUCE QUEEN's front door with me.

Immediately at the front door, above, original stairs, rail, floor, foyer.



APPLE SAUCE QUEEN & her husband stripped the flooring of layers of paint, above.


Each side of the foyer, above, with these doors. Were they to help caretake children, control pets?


The dining room, above & below, was a later addition. In the china cabinet, above, APPLE SAUCE QUEEN has a jar full of pottery, china, pipes, marbles & other misc. things found while digging in the garden. Some of the china is from China. Slow-witted me did not think to get a picture for you. Oops.


APPLE SAUCE QUEEN not only makes applesauce from her own apples but jams from her own blackberries, raspberries, strawberries & blueberries. Her grown children live close and she's able to caretake her grandchildren. Her love & joy with life is a delightful cloud to be enveloped within.

Why is this a fabulous landscape picture, above? Trust me, it is. APPLE SAUCE QUEEN was in the process of removing iris and planting vinca minor when NAUGHTY GIRL & I arrived.
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Many talk about low-maintenance few follow thru.
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Thank you NAUGHTY GIRL for this tiny slice of Tuesday.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Thursday, February 26, 2009

LATE VICTORIAN COLOR

Walking in London last month I saw this. Late Victorian tiles. Who knew? COLOR! PERMISSION! From curb to center of your house, vanishing threshold. Color, style, theme, intelligence, wit.
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Weedy looking 'weed' edging the path is Forget-Me-Not. Pure SOPHISTICATION.
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Can you imagine the blue blossoms spilling along the edge of the path? Calendar Shot.....
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This morning, watching the dawn thru my baywindow, I glanced up from reading the NYTimes. 'Oh my gosh, the sky is the same color as those pathway tiles in London.'
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A color splash lasting moments but still transmitting serotonins-dopamine-crack thru neural pathways.
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Does color affect you this way?

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A WINTER LANDSCAPE--A LITTLE HOWARD'S END

Enter as I did. A gap in the hedge. No hint of what lies beyond. Curious? Standing in the gap, seeing a charming garden. A small Howard's End.
Echoes of the frontdoor................
.......in the back wall of the summer house.

More evergreen hedges, below, leading where? Mystery. A potager? Clothesline? Chaise lounge for sunning nude?

Flagstone terrace, not lawn, at the house. Extending the house.
This house doesn't have a back. Each side is delightful.
Lead horse trough now a rain butt.
All the sticks & browns soon to become blossoms, calendar shots.
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Winter's bleak chic more important than the ease of spring/summer blowzy caresses.
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I didn't want to leave this Howard's End-a new clip- world-life-feeling-energy-joy.
This dirt path is landscape design brilliance. A feeling of the country in the city & cementing the idea of being in another garden room. Leaving the garden through another gap in the hedge. Tara's Golden Circle: the ability to enter/leave a garden room through 2 or more doorways. A little design trick I observed in the best of old landscapes.
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This landscape is a several hour design class but you're busy. Thanks for taking the time to walk in the garden with me.
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I shot these pics last month at the Birmingham England Botanic Garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

EVERGREEN HEDGES & GARDEN ROOMS

Evergreen hedges are the bones of a landscape. No down time. Behind the hedge is a secret garden room.

FORMULA: TREES (ceiling), SHRUBS (walls), MEADOW (rug), FOCAL POINT (art)
*Big leaves next to small leaves.
*Green leaves next to yellow leaves.
*Oval shapes next to flat shapes.
*Tara Turf, meadow, mix of what's there and keep what blows in.
*Focal point, think, Is it so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?

Landscapes are about contrasting everything for greater impact. Use as little as possible for the biggest impact. "Elegance is refusal" anon.
Behind the winged statue, above, is this charming garden room, below.
The same garden, below, contrasting purple foliage with green foliage.

Garden room, below, behind the hedge, above. Photo, below, framed with the purple foliage, above.

Sustainability isn't boring or new & needs little maintenance.


Thursday, February 5, 2009

SNOWS OF SPRING

My garden last spring. I garden for these moments. Designed? Yes. But really, who did the beauty? The unexpected moment? The surprise chair blossoms?

We see chairs glued with leaves, moss etc......for flower shows. This is Mother Nature laughing.

This looks 'natural' but it's completely designed. A backdrop evergreen hedge (camellias), deciduous flowering shrubs (hydrangeas) behind the chair, understory tree (Chinese snowball), a path to the right.

The white petals are from the Chinese snowball (Viburnum macrocephalum).